the ghosts of past moods would flood her mind with a
whole scene or train of thought merely at the sight of
three trees from a particular angle, or at the sound of the
pheasant clucking in the ditch. But to-night the circumstances
were strong enough to oust all other scenes; and
she looked at the field and the trees with an involuntary
intensity as if they had no such associations for her.
“Well, Ralph,” she said, “this is better than Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, isn’t it? Look, there’s a bird for you! Oh, you’ve brought
glasses, have you? Edward and Christopher mean to make
you shoot. Can you shoot? I shouldn’t think so—”
“Look here, you must explain,” said Ralph. “Who are
these young men? Where am I staying?”
“You are staying with us, of course,” she said boldly.
“Of course, you’re staying with us—you don’t mind coming,
do you?”
“If I had, I shouldn’t have come,” he said sturdily. They
walked on in silence; Mary took care not to break it for a
time. She wished Ralph to feel, as she thought he would,
all the fresh delights of the earth and air. She was right.
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In a moment he expressed his pleasure, much to her comfort.
“This is the sort of country I thought you’d live in,
Mary,” he said, pushing his hat back on his head, and
looking about him. “Real country. No gentlemen’s seats.”
He snuffed the air, and felt more keenly than he had
done for many weeks the pleasure of owning a body.
“Now we have to find our way through a hedge,” said
Mary. In the gap of the hedge Ralph tore up a poacher’s
wire, set across a hole to trap a rabbit.
“It’s quite right that they should poach,” said Mary,
watching him tugging at the wire. “I wonder whether it
was Alfred Duggins or Sid Rankin? How can one expect
them not to, when they only make fifteen shillings a
week? Fifteen shillings a week,” she repeated, coming
out on the other side of the hedge, and running her fingers
through her hair to rid herself of a bramble which
had attached itself to her. “I could live on fifteen shillings
a week—easily.”
“Could you?” said Ralph. “I don’t believe you could,”
he added.
“Oh yes. They have a cottage thrown in, and a garden
where one can grow vegetables. It wouldn’t be half bad,”
said Mary, with a soberness which impressed Ralph very much.
“But you’d get tired of it,” he urged.
“I sometimes think it’s the only thing one would never
get tired of,” she replied.
The idea of a cottage where one grew one’s own vegetables
and lived on fifteen shillings a week, filled Ralph
with an extraordinary sense of rest and satisfaction.
“But wouldn’t it be on the main road, or next door to a
woman with six squalling children, who’d always be hanging
her washing out to dry across your garden?”
“The cottage I’m thinking of stands by itself in a little
orchard.”
“And what about the Suffrage?” he asked, attempting
sarcasm.
“Oh, there are other things in the world besides the
Suffrage,” she replied, in an off-hand manner which was
slightly mysterious.
Ralph fell silent. It annoyed him that she should have
plans of which he knew nothing; but he felt that he had
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no right to press her further. His mind settled upon the
idea of life in a country cottage. Conceivably, for he could
not examine into it now, here lay a tremendous possibility;
a solution of many problems. He struck his stick upon
the earth, and stared through the dusk at the shape of
the country.
“D’you know the points of the compass?” he asked.
“Well, of course,” said Mary. “What d’you take me for?—
a Cockney like you?” She then told him exactly where the
north lay, and where the south.
“It’s my native land, this,” she said. “I could smell my
way about it blindfold.”
As if to prove this boast, she walked a little quicker, so
that Ralph found it difficult to keep pace with her. At the
same time, he felt drawn to her as he had never been
before; partly, no doubt, because she was more independent
of him than in London, and seemed to be attached
firmly to a world where he had no place at all. Now the
dusk had fallen to such an extent that he had to follow
her implicitly, and even lean his hand on her shoulder
when they jumped a bank into a very narrow lane. And he
felt curiously shy of her when she began to shout through
her hands at a spot of light which swung upon the mist
in a neighboring field. He shouted, too, and the light
stood still.
“That’s Christopher, come in already, and gone to feed
his chickens,” she said.
She introduced him to Ralph, who could see only a tall
figure in gaiters, rising from a fluttering circle of soft feathery
bodies, upon whom the light fell in wavering discs,
calling out now a bright spot of yellow, now one of greenish-
black and scarlet. Mary dipped her hand in the bucket
he carried, and was at once the center of a circle also; and
as she cast her grain she talked alternately to the birds
and to her brother, in the same clucking, half-inarticulate
voice, as it sounded to Ralph, standing on the outskirts of
the fluttering feathers in his black overcoat.
He had removed his overcoat by the time they sat round
the dinner-table, but nevertheless he looked very strange
among the others. A country life and breeding had preserved
in them all a look which Mary hesitated to call
either innocent or youthful, as she compared them, now
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sitting round in an oval, softly illuminated by candlelight;
and yet it was something of the kind, yes, even in
the case of the Rector himself. Though superficially marked
with lines, his face was a clear pink, and his blue eyes
had the long-sighted, peaceful expression of eyes seeking
the turn of the road, or a distant light through rain,
or the darkness of winter. She looked at Ralph. He had
never appeared to her more concentrated and full of purpose;
as if behind his forehead were massed so much
experience that he could choose for himself which part
of it he would display and which part he would keep to
himself. Compared with that dark and stern countenance,
her brothers’ faces, bending low over their soup-plates,
were mere circles of pink, unmolded flesh.
“You came by the 3.10, Mr. Denham?” said the Reverend
Wyndham Datchet, tucking his napkin into his collar,
so that almost the whole of his body was concealed by a
large white diamond. “They treat us very well, on the
whole. Considering the increase of traffic, they treat us
very well indeed. I have the curiosity sometimes to count
the trucks on the goods’ trains, and they’re well over fifty—
well over fifty, at this season of the year.”
The old gentleman had been roused agreeably by the
presence of this attentive and well-informed young man,
as was evident by the care with which he finished the last
words in his sentences, and his slight exaggeration in the
number of trucks on the trains. Indeed, the chief burden of
the talk fell upon him, and he sustained it to-night in a
manner which caused his sons to look at him admiringly
now and then; for they felt shy of Denham, and were glad
not to have to talk themselves. The store of information
about the present and past of this particular corner of
Lincolnshire which old Mr. Datchet produced really surprised
his children, for though they knew of its existence,
they had forgotten its extent, as they might have forgotten
the amount of family plate stored in the plate-chest,
until some rare celebration brought it forth.
After dinner, parish business took the Rector to his
study, and Mary proposed that they should sit in the
kitchen.
“It’s not the kitchen really,” Elizabeth hastened to explain
to her guest, “but we call it so—”
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“It’s the nicest room in the house,” said Edward.
“It’s got the old rests by the side of the fireplace, where
the men hung their guns,” said Elizabeth, leading the
way, with a tall brass candlestick in her hand, down a
passage. “Show Mr. Denham the steps, Christopher… .
When the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were here two years
ago they said this was the most interesting part of the
house. These narrow bricks prove that it is five hundred
years old—five hundred years, I think—they may have
said six.” She, too, felt an impulse to exaggerate the age
of the bricks, as her father had exaggerated the number
of trucks. A big lamp hung down from the center of the
ceiling and, together with a fine log fire, illuminated a
large and lofty room, with rafters running from wall to
wall, a floor of red tiles, and a substantial fireplace built
up of those narrow red bricks which were said to be five
hundred years old. A few rugs and a sprinkling of armchairs
had made this ancient kitchen into a sitting-room.
Elizabeth, after pointing out the gun-racks, and the hooks
for smoking hams, and other evidence of incontestable
age, and explaining that Mary had had the idea of turn
ing the room into a sitting-room—otherwise it was used
for hanging out the wash and for the men to change in
after shooting—considered that she had done her duty
as hostess, and sat down in an upright chair directly beneath
the lamp, beside a very long and narrow oak table.
She placed a pair of horn spectacles upon her nose, and
drew towards her a basketful of threads and wools. In a
few minutes a smile came to her face, and remained there
for the rest of the evening.
“Will you come out shooting with us to-morrow?” said
Christopher, who had, on the whole, formed a favorable
impression of his sister’s friend.
“I won’t shoot, but I’ll come with you,” said Ralph.
“Don’t you care about shooting?” asked Edward, whose
suspicions were not yet laid to rest.
“I’ve never shot in my life,” said Ralph, turning and
looking him in the face, because he was not sure how
this confession would be received.
“You wouldn’t have much chance in London, I suppose,”
said Christopher. “But won’t you find it rather dull—just
watching us?”
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“I shall watch birds,” Ralph replied, with a smile.
“I can show you the place for watching birds,” said
Edward, “if that’s what you like doing. I know a fellow
who comes down from London about this time every year
to watch them. It’s a great place for the wild geese and
the ducks. I’ve heard this man say that it’s one of the
best places for birds in the country.”
“It’s about the best place in England,” Ralph replied.
They were all gratified by this praise of their native county;
and Mary now had the pleasure of hearing these short
questions and answers lose their undertone of suspicious
inspection, so far as her brothers were concerned, and
develop into a genuine conversation about the habits of
birds which afterwards turned to a discussion as to the
habits of solicitors, in which it was scarcely necessary for
her to take part. She was pleased to see that her brothers
liked Ralph, to the extent, that is, of wishing to secure
his good opinion. Whether or not he liked them it was
impossible to tell from his kind but experienced manner.
Now and then she fed the fire with a fresh log, and as the
room filled with the fine, dry heat of burning wood, they
all, with the exception of Elizabeth, who was outside the
range of the fire, felt less and less anxious about the
effect they were making, and more and more inclined for
sleep. At this moment a vehement scratching was heard
on the door.
“Piper!—oh, damn!—I shall have to get up,” murmured
Christopher.
“It’s not Piper, it’s Pitch,” Edward grunted.
“All the same, I shall have to get up,” Christopher
grumbled. He let in the dog, and stood for a moment by
the door, which opened into the garden, to revive himself
with a draught of the black, starlit air.
“Do come in and shut the door!” Mary cried, half turning
in her chair.
“We shall have a fine day to-morrow,” said Christopher
with complacency, and he sat himself on the floor at her
feet, and leant his back against her knees, and stretched
out his long stockinged legs to the fire—all signs that he
felt no longer any restraint at the presence of the stranger.
He was the youngest of the family, and Mary’s favorite, partly
because his character resembled hers, as Edward’s character
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resembled Elizabeth’s. She made her knees a comfortable
rest for his head, and ran her fingers through his hair.
“I should like Mary to stroke my head like that,” Ralph
thought to himself suddenly, and he looked at Christopher,
almost affectionately, for calling forth his sister’s
caresses. Instantly he thought of Katharine, the thought
of her being surrounded by the spaces of night and the
open air; and Mary, watching him, saw the lines upon his
forehead suddenly deepen. He stretched out an arm and
placed a log upon the fire, constraining himself to fit it
carefully into the frail red scaffolding, and also to limit
his thoughts to this one room.
Mary had ceased to stroke her brother’s head; he moved
it impatiently between her knees, and, much as though
he were a child, she began once more to part the thick,
reddish-colored locks this way and that. But a far stronger
passion had taken possession of her soul than any
her brother could inspire in her, and, seeing Ralph’s change
of expression, her hand almost automatically continued
its movements, while her mind plunged desperately for
some hold upon slippery banks.
CHAPTER XVI
Into that same black night, almost, indeed, into the very
same layer of starlit air, Katharine Hilbery was now gazing,
although not with a view to the prospects of a fine
day for duck shooting on the morrow. She was walking up
and down a gravel path in the garden of Stogdon House,
